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If by "emperor's-new-clothes situation" you mean the paranoia about what these companies "know" about individuals, I agree. But since at least Google's revenue

If by "emperor's-new-clothes situation" you mean the paranoia about what these companies "know" about individuals, I agree. But since at least Google's revenue last year was $75 billion, it's clearly valuable to have statistically significant information about groups of people. I think that people who are worried about data that others have on them would be better served by worrying about data brokers first, though: https://www.propublica.org/article/everything-we-know-about-what-data-brokers-know-about-you https://www.propublica.org/article/everything-we-know-about-... (though again, I think that the amount these people know and sell to others is less than a small town shopkeeper would know about their patrons 100 years ago).

unprepare 10y ago
>though again, I think that the amount these people know and sell to others is less than a small town shopkeeper would know about their patrons 100 years ago but a shopkeeper 100 years ago would have longstanding relationships with those people, they would have to face significant consequences if they used this information to swindle people. They have as much stake in maintaining an honest relationship as the shopper, its a symbiotic relationship. a distributed system of databases owned and traded by conglomerates has none of that
Myrmornis 10y ago
I think by "emperor's-new-clothes situation" GP is referring to the possibility that companies are paying for advertising based on the notion that it will be targeted using sophisticated metadata on users, but that the metadata is in fact far less sophisticated than touted. One would think that all significant ad spend by sane companies is made in the context of an empirical study demonstrating the uptick in the relevant metrics caused by (smaller) ad spend. But honestly, I share the suspicions of the GP, that western capitalism in certain areas (e.g. Bro-y advertising) is influenced more by group think and connections and unthinking continuation of established business practices, than by truly objective data-driven decision making.

unprepare 10y ago

>though again, I think that the amount these people know and sell to others is less than a small town shopkeeper would know about their patrons 100 years ago but a shopkeeper 100 years ago would have longstanding relationships with those people, they would have to face significant consequences if they used this information to swindle people. They have as much stake in maintaining an honest relationship as the shopper, its a symbiotic relationship. a distributed system of databases owned and traded by conglomerates has none of that

Myrmornis 10y ago

I think by "emperor's-new-clothes situation" GP is referring to the possibility that companies are paying for advertising based on the notion that it will be targeted using sophisticated metadata on users, but that the metadata is in fact far less sophisticated than touted. One would think that all significant ad spend by sane companies is made in the context of an empirical study demonstrating the uptick in the relevant metrics caused by (smaller) ad spend. But honestly, I share the suspicions of the GP, that western capitalism in certain areas (e.g. Bro-y advertising) is influenced more by group think and connections and unthinking continuation of established business practices, than by truly objective data-driven decision making.